The international crisis swirling around the shooting down by a Russia Buk anti-air missile of the Malaysian passenger flight Boeing 777 over E. Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard, deepened further Saturday, July 19. Washington suspects Moscow of supplying the pro-Russian separatists with the lethal missile, whereas the Europeans accuse them of preventing international observers obtaining access to the crash site near their village of Rozsypne. Teams from Europol and Interpol head to Ukraine to identify the bodies of the plane crash victims. European officials don’t trust the rebels’ post mortem examinations.

Wednesday, June 4, President Poroshenko has a date in Warsaw with US President Barack Obama, who is coming to assure East European leaders that America is there to defend them against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s designs. Obama will find its leaders hard to convince. He left them, as well as Middle East leaders, deeply worried by the policy messages he delivered at West Point last Wednesday, when he said that for the “best American hammer not every problem is a nail” and advocated instead isolation for Russia and diplomacy for Iran.

With presidential elections at the end of the month, Ukraine’s oligarchs are likely to agree to an unofficial split of territory in the central and western parts of the country, leaving Russian influence in the east and Crimea intact.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bid during her visit to Washington Friday, April 2, to bridge the differences between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin over Ukraine was overtaken by the onset of civil war. After the Kiev government launched its first serious offensive Friday to take E. Ukrainian towns from pro-Russian militias, Moscow repudiated responsibility for events in that region. Putin’s spokesman called it a punitive action which broke the Geneva accords: “Neither Russia, nor any other country,” he said, “can any longer influence the citizens of Ukraine’s southeast…"

Russia and Ukraine were heading Sunday, April 27, for their first military clash over the rebel-held town of Slavyansk, debkafile reports. The outcome will determine who controls the Donetsk region and possibly all of East of Ukraine – the separatists or the provisional government in Kiev. The engagement would potentially pit 11,000 special Russian forces based at Rostov on Don against 15,000 troops massed outside the flashpoint town of Slavyansk. President Barack Obama is finding it hard to enlist a US-European coalition for strong sanctions against Moscow.

Defense Minister Gen. Sergey Shoigu Thursday, April 24, ordered the Russian army to start drills at Rostov on Don near the Ukraine border. debkafile: This order amounted to a state of alert, which required the troops to move up to the Ukraine border and take up prepared positions as bridgeheads if ordered to enter East Ukraine. In the past 48 hours, Russian officials have kept up an unprecedented stream of invective against the provisional government in Kiev – called “junta” - and the Obama administration for its intervention in Ukraine.

The Obama-Putin contest over Ukraine no longer fits the definition of a cold war revival. It is a new kind of world war, fought by stealth between two financial and intelligence colossi aiming for each other’s economic jugulars amid skirmishes over Ukraine. In its latest issue out Friday, DEBKA Weekly reveals how this novel war is orchestrated from a secret US headquarters in Kiev and the SVR center at Yasenevo near Moscow – and looks ahead at its global wings.
Don’t miss this original expose. To subscribe to DEBKA Weeklysign here.

The Kerry-Lavrov “de-escalation” recipe for Ukraine, concluded in Geneva Thursday, April 17, consists of the same ingredients as their previous deals: a slick-sounding compromise that the US and Russian can more or less live with; a gloss over the real elements at issue between them; and a deal that goes over the heads of the prime movers involved in the conflict. By Friday, the two rival camps in Ukraine were digging in their heels against it. Though threatened with sanctions, Vladimir Putin is waiting to see if the West makes the Kiev government moderate its positions.

The Ukrainian government has offered sweeping autonomous powers to restive, pro-Russian regions as a concession to Moscow's demands. Acting prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told regional leaders and businessmen Friday, April 11 in the eastern town of Donetsk, where pro-Russian separatists have declared a People’s Republic, that he is ready to consider a law on referendums. He is trying to avert Ukraine’s breakup into pro-Western European and pro-Russian regions by a gesture that is likely a Western trial balloon for Moscow.

As the Six Power group and Iran prepared for their third round of nuclear talks in Vienna next week (Tuesday-Wednesday, April 8-9), Tehran frankly admitted to exploiting the holes in the six-month interim deal they forged in Geneva last November by using advanced centrifuges and carrying on with the Arak project. This will be Moscow’s first opportunity to make good on its threat to confront the West and line up with Iran, in retaliation for Western penalties for its annexation of Crimea. Moscow and Tehran are close to a mammoth oil-for-food barter deal.

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel Sunday March 30 instructed Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme commander in Europe, to set out at once from Washington to Brussels for consultations with alliance commanders on a possible Russian invasion of Moldova’s Russian-speaking breakaway enclave of Transnistria, after Crimea. Chairs of both US House and Senate Intelligence Committees report Russian forces massed on Ukrainian borders, as well as covert forces inside the country. Some reports claim a Russian buildup in South Ossetia too for a possible thrust into Armenia.